Saturday, 30 August 2014

EBOLA IN NIGERIA: HAVE WE QUARANTINED THE MONEY INSTEAD OF SUSPECTED VICTIMS?

Following the calculated premeditated infestation of Nigeria with the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) by the Liberian-American Patrick Sawyer July 2014, Nigeria has been in state of medical emergency.  In appreciation of the great dangers to the whole world if Nigeria ended up with an escalated Ebola Virus Disease epidemic, the World Health Organization declared a state of medical emergency in West Africa.
So far, if the daily briefings of the Minister of Health of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the Lagos State Government are anything to go by, our response to the EVD imported in to Nigeria by Mr. Sawyer and his evil sponsors has been commendable.  The Federal Government ‘voted’ a whopping N1.9 billion in the first instance to enable surveillance, quarantine and treatment of suspects and victims.

Photo Credit:  Google

It is disturbing to learn that in spite of the above efforts and huge sum of money voted, some of those who had contact with the devil Sawyer who are supposedly, or are supposed to be, under surveillance and quarantine, had successfully evaded these critical stages in the management of the crisis.  Well known suspects and victims had surfaced in other locations in Nigeria in a manner indicative of a written script being played out.  See the triangle of Lagos/Port Harcourt/Enugu. 

A nurse who worked on the Sawyer case at First Foundation Hospital was heard to have successfully evaded ‘surveillance and quarantine’ and traveled to Enugu and met with her family members leading to twenty people being quarantined in Enugu.  To date we do not know how it came to be that she was able to leave to the East under the circumstances.  Is there a chance that there is a clearly written script that she had a copy of that required the whole Nigeria to be infested?

Now the news is awash with one of the primary contacts of Patrick Sawyer who is clearly infected having evaded surveillance and quarantine and traveled to Port Harcourt where he secretly obtained treatment in a hotel room leading to the infection of the Doctor that treated him who has now died.  The doctor’s wife has also been infected.  The question that shoots very sharply at us now is: “how about the doctor’s children, house girl and house boy, brothers and sisters, friends and may be parents that he had been living normally with and having contacts with while playing his game of death with this Patrick Sawyer’s primary contact?”

Is there a chance that the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) or elements of its workforce in Liberia and Nigeria are embroiled in a complicity to bring this deadly EVD to Nigeria and to what ends was this evil hatched?  These questions have come to the fore given that Patrick Sawyer, a while known Liberian EVD carrier, who had been in isolation in his country where the EVD had already become an epidemic and, who has been denied access to his offices and premises by the company he works for, was sponsored by ECOWAS with approval of the Liberian Government officials that know his condition, to come to Nigeria ostensibly to attend a conference.  How come he was traveling with a number of ECOWAS officials who had all contracted the disease now and one of who had died in Nigeria along with him?  Too many questions to be ignored.  May be these questions would be the subject of other discourses on this subject in future.

The other day, some friends and I were discussing the EVD problem in Nigeria.  When we came to the good efforts of the Federal and Lagos State Governments in this matter, one of us expressed his worries that instead of mounting surveillance on all suspects and putting them in quarantine to ensure that the disease is contained, a typical Nigerian official would prefer to put the money voted under surveillance and, quarantine the funds in their private bank accounts and other ways they use in stashing stolen public money while allowing the suspects and victims to run free and infest everyone they meet with the deadly virus.

There were quite some complaints last week by families of the EVD suspects and victims that their relations who caught the disease are abandoned to die.  The Lagos State Government has also reported at a time that they had not received the N200 million that the Federal Government promised to provide to the State Government to support its laudable efforts and of course, the burden to deal with the EVD emergency in Lagos.  With the huge sums voted, one expected that the suspects would be provided with enough opportunity to stay alive if they are not infected with the deadly strain and if so infected, to be supported to die in a happy state of mind.

What the Nigerian Federal and the Lagos State governments had done so far as we have learned in the pronouncements are commendable.  I plead with officials assigned with the responsibility to manage the Ebola Virus Disease health emergency funds in the West African sub-region and Nigerian officials in particular to PLEASE not put the funds voted for this emergency under surveillance and quarantine.  Quarantining the money voted for this medical emergency would certainly bring curses worse than EVD on them and their families. 

Remember the servant of Elisha in the Judeo-Christian Bible.


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